Rearing Patterns In Two-children Families And The Psychological And Behavioral Outcomes Of Firstborn

With the adjustment of our country’s birth policy from "selective two-children" to"universal two-children" in an all-round way,there has been a whirlwind of adjustment within each little house.The psychological and behavioral adaptation of the first-born children who suddenly break away from the role of only child has become a topic popularity concerned from academia,government departments and the general public.At present,there are still some controversies in the academic circle about the changes in the psychological and behavioral performance of the first-born children during this transitional period.Some researchers emphasize its positive aspects while some researchers emphasize its negative aspects.However,childhood is still a period of dependence on family relations.During the transition from a one-child family to a two-children family,family relations have been reorganized and the parenting need to be adjusted urgently.If the rearing patterns cannot be timely and correctly guided,the first-born children will be exposed to high risks,resulting in adaptation difficulties,which will have a significant impact on the children’s individual development,family happiness and social harmony.Therefore,to explore the process of the influence of the second child family rearing pattern on the psychological behavior of the first child,the internal mechanism and boundary conditions become the key issues to promote the benign adaptation of the first child.However,in view of the existing research’s deficiencies in the comprehensive consideration of family and individual influencing factors,the choice of subjects’development stages,and the consideration of policies and cultural particularities,this research has also added two key factors to further explore.One is the parenting sense of competence besides rearing patterns.Account the family level,the mother as the primary caregiver in the process of children’s development,her sense of parenting ability equivalent to an internal strength accumulated in her parenting practice,playing an important role in buffering sudden changes in the family.The other is the perceptions of fairness of the first-born children.In the families with two children,the siblings’pursuit of fairness is not only an eternal ideal,but also a topic they often discuss in family.The fair evaluation of rearing patterns affects the first-born’s development of social emotional adaptation.To sum up,the study selected the parents’ differential treatment,the most prominent rearing pattern in families with two children as a variable.The sample included 227 firstborns aged 9-11 years whose mother gave birth to a second child from a primary school in Xi’an,The children completed Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire,Inventory of Subjective Life Quality,Sibling Inventory of Differential Experience-Chinese Version and Perceptions of the Fairness of Parental Differential Treatment scale successively.After that,their mother completed the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale,to explore the mediating effect of the firstborn’s perceptions of the fairness between parents’ differential treatment with their psychological and behavioral performance,as well as the moderating effect of the parenting sense of competence on this mediating model.The study found that:(1)It is the total amount of parents’ differential treatment rather than the direction that affects the psychological and behavioral performance of the first-born children.In the two-children families with high level of parents’ differential treatment,the psychological and behavioral performance of the first-born children is significantly worse than that of the families with the low,but the psychological and behavioral performance of the first-born children treated by parents better than younger siblings is not significantly better than that of the first-born children treated worse.(2)Parents’ differential affection is negatively correlated with the first-born children’s perception of fairness for differential affection and cognitive satisfaction,while the first-born children’s perception of fairness for differential affection is positively correlated with the cognitive satisfaction,and the mother’s parenting efficacy is positively correlated with the first-born children’s cognitive satisfaction.(3)The perception of fairness for differential affection of first-born children completely mediated the effect of parents’ differential affection on the cognitive satisfaction,and the latter half of the mediating path is regulated by the parenting efficacy.Specifically,only for the first-born children with lower mother’s parenting efficacy can be significantly predicted by the perception of fairness.